The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

But Maslow’s most interesting observation was that all the women, in all dominance groups, preferred a male who was slightly more dominant than themselves. One very high dominance woman spent years looking for a man of superior dominance – meanwhile having many affairs; and once she found him, married him and lived happily ever after. However, she enjoyed picking fights with him, provoking him to violence that ended in virtual rape; and this sexual experience she found the most satisfying of all. Clearly, even this man was not quite dominant enough, and she was provoking him to an artificially high level of dominance.

The rule seemed to be that, for a permanent relationship, a man and woman needed to be in the same dominance group. Medium dominance women were nervous of high dominance males, and low dominance women were terrified of medium dominance males. As to the males, they might well show a sexual interest in a woman of a lower dominance group, but it would not survive the act of seduction. A medium dominance woman might be superficially attracted by a high dominance male; but on closer acquaintance she would find him brutal and unromantic. A high dominance male might find a medium dominance female ‘beddable’, but closer acquaintance would reveal her as rather uninteresting, like an unseasoned meal. To achieve a personal relationship, the two would need to be in the same dominance group. Maslow even devised psychological tests to discover whether the ‘dominance gap’ between a man and a woman was of the right size to form the basis of a permanent relationship.

It was some time after writing a book about Maslow (New Pathways in Psychology, published in 1972) that it dawned on me that this matter of the ‘dominance gap’ threw an interesting light on many cases of partnership in crime. The first case of the sort to arouse my curiosity was that of Albert T. Patrick, a scoundrelly New York lawyer who, in 1900, persuaded a manservant named Charles Jones to kill his employer with chloroform. Jones had been picked out of the gutter by his employer, a rich old man named William Rice, and had every reason to be grateful to him. Yet he quickly came under Patrick’s spell and took part in the plot to murder and defraud. The plot misfired; both were arrested. The police placed them in adjoining cells. Patrick handed Jones a knife saying ‘You cut your throat first and I’ll follow …’ Jones was so completely under Patrick’s domination that he did not even pause to wonder how Patrick would get the knife back. A gurgling noise alerted the police, who were able to foil the attempted suicide. Patrick was sentenced to death but was eventually pardoned and released.

How did Patrick achieve such domination? There was no sexual link between them, and he was not blackmailing Jones. But what becomes very clear from detailed accounts of the case is that Patrick was a man of extremely high dominance, while Jones was quite definitely of medium dominance. It was Patrick’s combination of charm and dominance that exerted such a spell.

It struck me that in many cases of double-murder (that is, partnership in murder), one of the partners is high dominance and the other medium. Moreover, it seems that this odd and unusual combination of high and medium dominance actually triggers the violence. In 1947, Raymond Fernandez, a petty crook who specialised in swindling women, met Martha Beck, a fat nurse who had been married three times. Fernandez picked up his victims through ‘lonely hearts club’ advertisements, got his hands on their cash, and vanished. When Martha Beck advertised for a soul-mate, Fernandez picked out her name because she was only twenty-six. His first sight of her was a shock: she weighed fourteen and a half stones and had a treble chin and a ruthless mouth. She also proved to have no money. But when Fernandez succumbed to the temptation to sleep with her, he was caught. She adored him; in spite of his toupee and gold teeth, he was the handsome Latin lover she had always dreamed about. Their sex life was a non-stop orgy. When Fernandez attempted to leave her, she tried to gas herself. And when he finally explained that he had to get back to the business of making a living, and that his business involved seducing rich women, her enthusiasm was unchecked. She offered to become a partner in the enterprise. But she suggested one refinement: that instead of merely abandoning the women, Fernandez should kill them. During the next two years, the couple murdered at least twenty women. Their final victims were Mrs Delphine Dowling of Grand Rapids, Michigan and her two-year-old daughter Rainelle; the police became curious about Mrs Dowling’s disappearance, searched the house, and found a spot of damp cement in the cellar floor. Under arrest, Fernandez and his ‘sister’ admitted shooting Mrs Dowling and drowning the child in a bathtub two days later when she would not stop crying. Further investigation slowly uncovered a two-year murder spree. Both were executed.

The evidence makes it clear that the sexually insatiable Martha was an altogether more dominant character than Ray Fernandez, who, at the time of their meeting, was only a rather unsuccessful petty crook. Almost certainly, he qualifies as medium dominance; certainly, Martha was high dominance. Then why were they drawn together? From Martha’s point of view, because Fernandez was a fairly personable male with a high sex drive. From his point of view, because the frenzied adoration of this rather frightening woman was flattering. A revealing glimpse into their relationship was afforded by an episode in court; Martha came into court wearing a silk dress, green shoes and bright red lipstick; she rushed across the court, cupped Fernandez’s face in her hands, and kissed him hungrily again and again. Sexually speaking, she was the one who took the lead.

It seems evident that Fernandez would have never committed murder without Martha’s encouragement. It was the combination of the high dominance female and medium dominance male that led to violence.

Again and again, in cases of ‘double murder’, the same pattern emerges. It explains one of the most puzzling crimes of the century – the murder by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb of fourteen-year-old Bobbie Franks in May 1924. Both came from wealthy German-Jewish homes; both were university graduates. They became lovers when Loeb was thirteen and Leopold fourteen. Loeb was handsome, athletic and dominant; Leopold was round shouldered, short-sighted and shy. Loeb was a daredevil, and in exchange for submitting to Leopold’s desires, made him sign a contract to become his partner in crime. They committed a number of successful petty thefts and finally decided that the supreme challenge was to commit the perfect murder. Bobbie Franks – a friend of Loeb’s younger brother – was chosen almost at random as the victim. Franks was picked up when he came out of school and murdered in the back of the car by Loeb, while Leopold drove; then his body was stuffed into a culvert. Then they tried to collect ransom money from the boy’s family, but the body was discovered by a railway worker. So were Nathan Leopold’s spectacles, lying near the culvert. These were traced to Leopold through the optician. The trial was a sensation; it seemed to be a case of ‘murder for fun’ committed by two spoilt rich boys. Leopold admitted to being influenced by Nietzsche’s idea of the superman. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Yet the key to the case lies in their admission that Leopold called Loeb ‘Master’ and referred to himself as ‘Devoted Slave’. Loeb derived his pleasure from his total dominance of Leopold. Leopold might be far cleverer than he was, but he was obedient to Loeb’s will. It was Loeb who made Leopold sign a contract to join him in a career of crime, in exchange for permitting sodomy. Loeb was the one who got his ‘kicks’ out of crime; Leopold preferred bird-watching. Left to himself, Loeb would never have committed murder. But his deepest pleasure came from his dominance of Nathan Leopold, and to enjoy that dominance to the full he had to keep pushing Leopold deeper and deeper into crime.

One of the clearest examples of the dominance syndrome is the Moors murder case. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were arrested in October 1965, as a result of a tip-off to the police that they were concealing a body in their house. A cloakroom ticket concealed in a prayer book led to the discovery of two suitcases in the railway left luggage office at Manchester, and to photographs and tapes that connected Brady and Hindley to the disappearance of a ten-year-old girl, Lesley Ann Downey, who had vanished on Boxing Bay 1964. A police search on the moors revealed the body of Lesley Ann, and also that of a twelve-year-old boy, John Kilbride. The body found in their house was that of a seventeen-year-old youth, Edward Evans, who had been killed with an axe. Charged with the three murders, both were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.